The Two Trees

In the first paradise, we are told of two trees: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life. St Maximus the Confessor explains their significance: the tree of knowledge is the "feeling of the body" (passions) and the tree of life is the "mind of the soul"; one represents the physically perceptible, the other the spiritually intelligible. There is a sense in which a mimesis influenced by the Spirit is where these two trees intertwine; where the intelligible mingles with the perceptible in creative form, allowing one to see beyond the surface and into the depths of the creation, revealing the hidden divine reason (logos) therein. Adam, in giving himself wholly to the surface things, exchanged the creation for the Creator and divided himself from both God and the world, losing his ability to see the Logos in His inscription. The tree of knowledge overwhelmed his spiritual faculties and the tree of life was hidden from man, lost in a fragmented paradise.

+

This second tree, the tree of life, had to be transformed into something new to be once again offered to man: the form of a cross. With the tree of life becoming an instrument of death, the creation bearing its Creator Incarnate, begins the cosmic reversal. The last is made first; suffering becomes glory; death becomes life. The divisions made between God and man, heaven and earth, perceptible and intelligible, created and uncreated, each is restored in central act of the Creator trampling down death by death, uniting all by the second tree what had been divided by the first.

+

Each Christian must embrace this same cross- he must die to the tree of knowledge, to pleasures and passions, in order to obtain the tree bearing life, Christ Himself. No longer does man wander a garden for the life giving tree, but he comes to the tree made cruciform to receive a gradual communion in Christ's death, that he may be raised with Him in resurrection and live again in paradise.

(Part 13 of 14 of Mimetic Reality series)